In this illuminating and sweeping biography of France’s most infamous queen, best-selling author Antonia Fraser portrays a young woman whose journey from palace to guillotine was doomed by her innocence and the manipulations of the ancien régim In this illuminating and sweeping biography of France’s most infamous queen, best-selling author Antonia Fraser portrays a young woman whose journey from palace to guillotine was doomed by her innocence and the manipulations of the ancien régime.

The life of Marie Antoinette has been told before, but never with such sympathy. Antonia Fraser takes us behind the scenes to tell the story of the fourteen-year-old Archduchess of Austria’s arrival at the French Court of Versailles, betrothed to the reluctant future King Louis XVI. Hostage to her mother Empress Maria Theresa’s foreign policy, Marie Antoinette was immediately accused of political interference by the French, yet she was not interested in state affairs.

The kind of queen that Marie Antoinette wanted to be – gracious, philanthropic, patroness of the arts (especially music), and above all maternal and protective of her private life – was not to be. She was criticized fiercely for not following the expensive and intransigent ways of Versailles. Her marriage was a disaster and she was publicly ridiculed for her initial inability to conceive an heir. Her low self-esteem led to years of frivolity and extravagance. Yet after 1789 when she at last became a mother, and her husband collapsed into weakness, Marie Antoinette found both the spirit and the courage to face her accusers and her tragic end.

Marie Antoinette is a work of impeccable scholarship that took five years to complete. In preparing her material for this work, Antonia Fraser researched the archives of Austria and France and visited all the sites associated with the Queen. The result is a masterpiece of historical non-fiction. ...Continua Nascondi

Really well written, Antonia Fraser gives lots of details of the places, the characters and historical events. I was truly addicted to this book, and read more on Marie Antoinette after reading this book.

It's not the first biography I've read about the last Queen of France, and of course I had my History during my school years, so I did know what I was going to read. Still, while I travelled through pages and those fatal decades of XVIII century, I c

It's not the first biography I've read about the last Queen of France, and of course I had my History during my school years, so I did know what I was going to read. Still, while I travelled through pages and those fatal decades of XVIII century, I couldn't help hoping for a different turn of events: this time the rulers won't commit the same mistakes and misjudgements, the Revolution won't allow itself the same excesses, the story will end another way. This is weird, isn't it? Even stupid. Truth is, Marie Antoinette's life and personae are so charming that they are not only the perfect matter for books and movies, but they could be a novel themselves, with no need to change even a comma; my mind was probably thinking to be in front of a work of fiction, hence the happy ending I was hoping for. As far as this biography is concerned, I feel I have to agree with those who say that, basically, Lady Fraser has done a huge collecting job. In my opinion, the most valuable aim she has reached with her work is drawing again attention upon one of the most mistreated and misunderstood figure in history, one who has still a lot to tell (and who, incidentally, didn't deserve the biopic offered by Sofia Coppola). I'm not saying this is a bad result; just that, together with Fraser's work, even her own sources shouldn't be forgotten and should get their place in the sun.